1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a carousel product which can be used in a variety of ways to dispense and improve a restocking process, and can be used for a wide variety of associated tasks, e.g. inventory control, crediting returns, cycle counts, and the like.
2. Description of the Background
Medical facilities, such as hospitals, nursing homes, etc. have a centralized location such as a pharmacy department or materials management department within the facility to coordinate the dispensing of drugs or medical supplies to the patients of the medical facility. The departments utilizing medications and medical supplies in such facilities have long been burdened with the increasingly complex record keeping and inventory management that results from caring for hundreds, if not thousands, of patients every day. Various methods have been employed to assist a centralized pharmacy or other centralized medical supply departments with maintaining accurate records while attempting to reduce the burden of managing all of the information associated with the distribution of medications and medical supplies. The responsibilities of the centralized supply include: filling individual patient prescriptions on a daily basis; administration of drugs using the five rights: right drug, right patient, right dose, right time and right route, dispensing medical supplies to patients; maintaining sufficient inventory of each drug or medical supply so as to have sufficient quantities on hand to administer to patients on a daily basis; tracking of drug interactions to prevent a patient from being given a drug that has adverse affects when combined with other drugs; accounting for the purchase of medications and medical supplies for use in the facility; accounting associated with dispensing of medications and medical supplies to individual patients; tracking of medication expiration dates to rid inventories of expired medications; and tracking of drug lot numbers, for example, in the event of a recall of a particular drug or drug lot number.
Medical facilities will dispense medications in one of three modes: centralized, decentralized, or a hybrid of partial decentralization. In facilities that are partly or fully decentralized, a very important function of the centralized pharmacy or materials management department is to restock various inventory locations, e.g. nurses stations, unit-based cabinets, satellite pharmacies, or off-site facilities in a network, with the quantity and types of medications and medical supplies that must be dispensed by the decentralized locations on a daily basis.
The need for storage locations in medical facilities remote from the centralized storage location stems from the need to be able to quickly and conveniently dispense medications and medical supplies (whether controlled or uncontrolled) to patients. To be able to dispense, there must be adequate supplies of the medications and medical supplies in the remote storage locations. To maintain the proper level of medications and medical supplies, accurate inventory control is necessary. Barring access to controlled substances by unauthorized personnel is also a necessary feature. The contents of these storage locations varies depending upon the medical procedures practiced in the area where the storage location is situated. For example, a storage location near an emergency room will be stocked differently than a storage location next to a surgical suite. Nevertheless, it is important to provide adequate supplies of all the required medications and medical supplies. It is also necessary to ensure that sufficient supplies are maintained at the decentralized and centralized storage locations without overstocking, because overstocking increases the cost of inventory by requiring more items to be maintained in inventory than are actually needed. Overstocking of inventory can also result in waste through spoilage of unused supplies. Excessive restocking of locations is also demanding on the facility's staff who must devote more of their time to monitor the storage locations to ensure that sufficient supplies are available.
A variety of systems have been developed to restock storage locations or to fill patient medication/supply orders. In one such system, referred to as a “cart exchange” system, dispensing carts distributed at dispensing locations in a medical facility are periodically exchanged with fully supplied carts. These carts contain medications which satisfy the patients' current medications orders. The “used” cart is returned to the central supply area where inventory decreases of particular medications or medical supplies are recorded and the cart is restocked to predetermined “par” levels. These par levels are intended to ensure constant availability of required medications or medical supplies.
In a similar system, individual carts are used but are not removed from their dispensing locations in the medical facility. Instead, a larger cart holding a variety of medications and medical supplies is circulated throughout the facility to restock individual carts to their par levels.
Although these systems are generally effective in restocking locations, they suffer from a number of drawbacks. One particular drawback is the potential for stock-outs that can arise if the inventories of the carts are not closely monitored. Adequate inventory monitoring can be problematic due to time limitations on the staff. Depletion of certain items from the carts can pose serious risks to the patients in the medical facility. Another drawback is that restocking storage locations is a very labor-intensive and inefficient process, especially when accurate inventory levels are not maintained in the centralized or decentralized location. Sites with decentralized locations usually have many different locations, each of which is individually restocked.
More recently, storage areas are being provided with dispensing carts or cabinets having computer processors for recording removal of medications or medical supplies from the dispensing cabinets. These carts or cabinets commonly include locked drawers having locked medication receptacles, and include computers. The computers commonly provide for limited access by selected medical personnel to such carts and cabinets and limited access to specific drawers or locations therein in response to entry of information into the computer. The computer creates inventory information for use by medical staff to ensure the continuity of the inventory in the carts or cabinets.
A system for restocking such computer controlled carts and cabinets is entitled Automated Restocking of Distributed Medication Dispensing Cabinets Using An Automated Medication Dispensing System, disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/480,819 and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention. The disclosed system automatically fills restock packages based on inventory information or configuration changes provided by various carts and cabinets located at the decentralized storage locations. The system encodes or otherwise disposes on the restock package an information carrier containing identifying information. To restock a dispensing cart or cabinet, a staff member decodes the information carrier encoded on the restock package. That may be accomplished by scanning a bar code or manually entering information into the cart's or cabinet's computer. Once the cart or cabinet confirms that the restock package is intended for it, the staff member loads the contents of the restock package into the cart or cabinet.
While the system of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/480,819 offers substantial advantages over other systems, some facilities may not have the resources to convert to such an automated system. Further, the facility may have the need to restock items which cannot be easily placed into a restocking package by automated equipment because of their size, weight, or configuration. Still other items may come from their manufacturers in bulk quantities or other types of packaging that make it difficult to automatically load them into a restocking package. Thus, the need exists for a restocking system that is at least in part manual, while taking advantage of the data generated by computer controlled carts and computer controlled cabinets. The need also exits for a restocking system that is at least in part manual, but can work side by side with computer automated restocking systems.